Additional Comments: Want it to be reliable, quiet. Other than swapping Video cards I don't want to touch it for 5 more years. I'd like something that can rock BF3 with the right Video Card, I know mine won't cut it at this resolution.

Additional Comments: Want it to be reliable, quiet. Other than swapping Video cards I don't want to touch it for 5 more years. I'd like something that can rock BF3 with the right Video Card, I know mine won't cut it at this resolution.

I am also an engineer

Anyway, regarding your SSD question I cannot find any benchmarks on the subject at the moment although I would imagine that an SSD as a system drive would be faster. For instance, lets say you have a HDD and an SSD and the SSD has a faster read and write speed. Then if you have a cache configuration that SSD would occasionally need to request info from the HDD which would lower the net speed of that system to less then that of the fastest component (the SSD). However, a SSD only system would not need to request info from a slower median.

Agree with venom4u: Always faster to put the OS on the SSD, if you think about it, not only is boot time faster, but even if a programs not saved on the main OS drive, it has to make a call to it since the programs running in an OS environment. On the power supply, I would go 500-600w to play it safe, in case you ever require it on a new graphics card upgrade in the future. Example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182200